San Jose State University suspends Udacity online course trials

San Jose State University's online education pilot held the promise of real course credit without the hassles of attending class in person. It hasn't worked that way in practice, however, and both SJSU as well as its partner Udacity have suspended their plans for fall courses. Quite simply, there have been too many flunkies so far -- while 83 percent of students completed their sessions this spring, no more than 44 percent of any given class earned a passing grade. SJSU and Udacity will use the break to learn what went wrong and retool the program, although it's not clear just when (or if) internet-based classes will resume. Online education is far from finished when similar for-credit trials have yet to begin; for now, though, SJSU students will have to drag themselves to the lecture hall.